Authorities on the lookout for “foreign agents” among NGOs

Mass checks are being conducted on non-governmental organisations to ensure they comply with the new law on foreign funding.

The
Russian Justice Ministry and the Public Prosecutor’s Office have announced
their intention to check up on how the so-called Law on Foreign Agents is being
enforced. Representatives of NGOs are living in fear of lawsuits.

Human
rights activists say more than 40 organisations in 16 Russian regions have
already undergone checks. These include the Russian office of Amnesty
International and the famous human rights organization Memorial, which studies
and collects documents connected with the history of repression during the
Soviet period and also investigates human rights violations in war zones.

In
its announcement concerning “foreign agents,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office
noted that these checks were of a standard nature and that their aim was “to
check up on adherence to the law in the activities of non-commercial
organizations financed by foreign sources.” The Justice Ministry added that
these mass checks of NGOs were being conducted in order to uncover
organisations which fit the description of “foreign agents.”

In
some regions officials from the local prosecutor’s office maintain that the
checks are being conducted in order to determine whether the activities of NGOs
conform to legislation on fighting extremism.

Human
rights activists are inclined to link these searches by the Public Prosecutor’s
Office and the Justice Ministry with a desire on the part of government
authorities to activate recent amendments to the Law on NGOs which went into
effect on November 21, 2012 and are better known as the “Law on Foreign
Agents”. These amendments instruct all NGOs receiving funds from abroad and
participating in political activities to register with the Justice Ministry as
“foreign agents”. These “foreign agents” will then be subject to strict rules
and control by the authorities.

Not
a single NGO in Russia has deemed it necessary to register with the Justice
Ministry. The concept of “foreign agents” has highly unpleasant connotations in
the Russian language. The terminology used in the amendments was presumably
borrowed from the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) enacted in 1938 in the
United States. However, what is apparently a fairly neutral legal term in
America has an absolutely distinct emotional colouring in Russian. The term
“foreign agent” is traditionally used with respect to spies. Consequently, many
human rights NGOs see in the demand to call themselves “foreign agents” an
intentional and calculating humiliation.

Many
non-commercial organizations, including the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial,
Golos, Civil Assistance and For Human Rights have refused to respect the
demands of the law. In February, 11 NGOs sent a complaint about the “Law on
Foreign Agents” to the European Court of Human Rights.

“This
law is absurd even from a legal standpoint,” said Boris Kagarlitsky, director
of the Institute of Globalization Studies and Social Movements. “The law can
oblige us to do something or not to do it. But I don’t understand the law that
demands that we call ourselves by a special name and make this known to the
state organs.”

Boris
Belenkin, a board member at Memorial, is sure that the current wave of checks
is a reaction to Vladimir Putin’s words to his colleagues at the FSB on
February 14 of this year. The Russian President said that the new laws on NGOs
“must be enforced unconditionally”.

“The
criteria according to which one may consider or not consider an organisation a
‘foreign agent’ are very vague,” said Belenkin. “At the Justice Ministry, which
is obliged to keep the new register, people could not imagine for a long time
according to what formal signs an organisation should be included in the
register. I don’t rule out the possibility that these mass checks are being
carried out now in part because they have finally come up with the necessary
criteria. Or they’ll develop them after the checks — depending on what they
manage to find.”

Belenkin
added that this wave of checks will in all likelihood be followed by a wave of
lawsuits, some prompted by violations of the “Law on Foreign Agents”, but
others prompted by other violations, given the scale of the checks and the
number of different organs doing the checking. “Memorial,” he said, “is ready
for these sessions. It only hopes that the courts will be objective.”